


Cry for Yesterday

by beetle



Series: Of Firsts and Forever [4]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Anxiety Attacks, Children, Detachment, Dissociation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Exiles, F/F, Grandpa Drack, Grief Displacement, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Major Character Injury, No Major Character Death, Original Character(s), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reyes has a heart, SAM and Sara bond, SAM is becoming a real boy, Sara notices, Space Pirates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-02
Updated: 2017-06-02
Packaged: 2018-11-08 05:59:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11075472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle
Summary: Here, beside the news of holy war and holy need, theirs is just a little sorrowed talk. . . .





	Cry for Yesterday

**Author's Note:**

> Notes/Warnings: Set post-game, vague spoilers.

When the _Tempest_ finally ported up after ninety-six days in the ass-end of Heleus—not including travel-time to and from the Nexus, the inevitable side-trips, and the freaking _space pirates_ that were apparently a _thing_ , now that the kett weren’t a worry—and followed by a large, but barely-functional passenger transport (converted), there were four full medical teams waiting at the dock for the injured.

 

The converted transport, the _Nostromo_ , was the first to start debarking its clutch of travelers, led by Lexi, heading up a steady stream of anti-grav and makeshift stretchers with more than two-dozen injured Exiled settlers of all ages . . . and two members of the _Tempest_ crew.

 

The medical teams immediately fell on the injured, checking vitals and rushing some off to the nearest Med Bay.

 

Meanwhile, the crew of the _Tempest_ straggled off the somewhat worse-for-wear ship, lead not by Pathfinder Scott Ryder, but by Cora Harper, his second-in-command. She looked tired and haggard . . . and she was limping. Behind her, came Suvi and PeeBee, their arms around each other. They seemed to be the only things keeping each other from collapsing.

 

After them, Jaal and Gil were helping Liam, who appeared to have a broken leg, hobble off the ship.

 

Following them were Kallo, then Drack: the former was barely dragging himself down the ramp, while the latter seemed as grimly impassive as ever . . . seemed to be ignoring the two small human children scurrying in his wake. They were looking around them with big, dark eyes set in peaky, traumatized little faces, the boy—still in toddlerhood—clinging to the hand of the girl, who looked to be six or so.

 

And behind _them_ . . . no one. No Scott. And he usually _led_ the way off the _Tempest_. Especially when he expected Reyes to be at the Nexus dock, waiting for him. He’d stride all intrepid and bold off the ship, only to practically squeal as he flung himself into Reyes’s waiting arms. And the other man wasted no time in swinging Scott around and kissing him soundly, lingering and letting Scott push him up against the nearest wall or pylon for the kind of activity that skirted the bounds of decency.

 

But for once . . . there was no Scott. And no Vetra, either . . . though, she was usually _last_ off, always finishing up last-minute work and checking the ship’s stocks for later provisioning.

 

Sara Ryder, having been shaken awake from a thin and disturbed doze, by Reyes Vidal—on whose shoulder she’d been dozing, while they’d sat on some containers, waiting for the _Tempest_ to port—was torn between running across the docking bay to Cora to find out what in the Hell had happened to make the Tempest four days late returning (not to mention why SAM hadn’t been able to connect to Scott’s implant for the same amount of time) . . . and simply running amongst the stretchers filling the docking bay, shouting her brother’s name.

 

The decision was taken out of her hands by Reyes, who was grey under his caramel complexion, but stony-faced. He stood them both up and quickly made their way not to Cora, who was conferring urgently with a Nexus official—Ben something-or-other—or toward the stretchers, but toward Lexi. The Asari doctor was directing the medical teams with brisk, calm efficiency and pointing out stretchers and injured who were in critical condition. Sara, holding on tightly to Reyes’s arm, was too numb and shocked to resist being towed along like a rudderless barge.

 

When they reached Lexi, Reyes stopped, waiting patiently for her to finish giving orders and directives. Less than two minutes later, when every member of the med teams had something or someone to take care of, the Asari doctor’s shoulders slumped and she shook her head wearily.

 

“What a clusterfuck,” she sighed, turning to the waiting smuggler and Pathfinder. She looked utterly worn-out. “If it’s not one thing in Heleus, it’s certainly another. Pirates!” she laughed ruefully, slightly hysterically. At least for an Asari. “In this day and age!”

 

“Well, the kett were the uber-predators of Heleus. Once they were brought down, there was a vacuum. And nature, as we all know, _abhors_ a vacuum,” Reyes noted with a shrug and his imperturbable _sangfroid_. But his eyes were shining far too brightly, and in seas of irritated red. “So . . . Dr. T’Perro . . . is my husband . . . dead?”

 

Lexi winced, but it turned into a comforting smile. “The Pathfinder is . . . injured, but in stable condition.”

 

Sara barely felt the tension flow out of her own body for the release of the coiled anxiety in Reyes’s. The smuggler inhaled sharply and nodded, blinking furiously for a few seconds. Then he hugged Sara, who was weeping silent tears of relief, closer, freeing his arm from hers to wrap it around her shoulders.

 

“He’s . . . _alive_ ,” Reyes breathed in a cracking, shaking voice. Lexi nodded.

 

“Not for lack of trying, but yes. He suffered a cranial injury and damage to his implant. We’ve been keeping him in an induced coma until the swelling in his brain goes down sufficiently. When it does, we’ll be able to micro-surgically repair the implant and within a few more days, awaken Scott.”

 

Sara buried her face in Reyes’s chest for a few moments; as always, he smelled like ultra-masculine cologne and ultra-expensive whisky.

 

“. . . prognosis looks extremely good,” Lexi was reassuring Reyes, when Sara looked up again, wiping her sore eyes. In the front of her awareness SAM was experiencing relief greater than he ever had. He instantly stopped trying—futilely, it turned out—to reestablish his connection with Scott and settled in the back of Sara’s mind as a watchful, alert awareness.

 

“He’ll be alight. It’s gonna be okay,” Sara murmured, to herself and to the AI she shared with her brother.

 

::Yes, Pathfinder. I . . . find I am experiencing both worry and relief in unusually large and intense measures.::

 

“Sounds like someone’s becoming a real boy, after all,” Sara muttered shakily, still nearly giddy with relief, herself. SAM’s tentative amusement tickled the back of her brain, briefly settling her nerves.

 

Until, that is, Lexi’s light-blue eyes met Sara’s, brimming with hesitance and awkward compassion that made Sara go cold for no reason.

 

Also, for no reason, she glanced at the _Tempest’s_ ramp, pulling slightly away from Reyes as she registered a sudden and terrible feeling in the pit of her stomach, and the back of her mind, where her instinct lived.

 

“Vetra. . . .” she huffed out in a numb-lipped croak.

 

“There was a firefight—the same one in which Scott was injured,” Lexi said quietly. “You’ll have to ask Drack or Cora for the gory details . . . suffice it to say, Scott and Liam were ambushed. Captured by pirates—and I keep waiting for that to sound _less_ bullshit than it is, and _that_ never happens—and Vetra and Drack were the ones who lead the rescue mission that not only retrieved Scott and Liam, but saved the lives of these Exiles, as well. Dispatched those bloody pirates, too.” Lexi gestured at the rapidly emptying docking bay. Cora and Drack were still speaking with an ashen-faced Ben something-or-other, who was holding in his arms one of the children—the small boy—who’d debarked with Drack. The kid appeared to be fast asleep. The older child, the girl stood at Drack’s side, alert and staring across the docking bay at Sara and Reyes, her small hand clutching tightly at Drack’s big thumb.

 

Sara blinked, numb all over again, and looked away from the girl’s intent, traumatized gaze. Reyes’s arm around her seemed, quite suddenly, the only thing keeping her from floating away. Her eyes darted to the few stretchers which remained, but Vetra wasn’t on any of them, as far as Sara could see.

 

“She was in the first wave sent to the Med Bay,” Lexi said gently. Sara nodded, stunned and mute, and meeting the doctor’s weary, worried eyes.

 

“What . . . what are Vetra’s injuries? And what’s _her_ prognosis?” Reyes asked grimly, while Sara’s mind still scrambled for agency and order amongst the silently howling maelstrom within. The strong, steady arm around her tightened and, with a moan, she sagged against Reyes’s side.

 

Lexi’s concerned gaze lingered on Sara for a few moments, before she looked to Reyes and sighed. “We’re doing and will continue doing everything we can. Vetra’s strong, tenacious, and in excellent health. She has a lot to live for.” Her eyes flicked to Sara again. “That being said . . . she’s sustained massive internal organ damage. It’s been touch-and-go cloning enough blood to keep her organs, such as they are, working. But . . . now that we’re on the Nexus . . . anyway. We’re calling the weapons the pirates used _disruptors_ because that’s exactly what they do: disrupt normal organ function. Break down tissues at an accelerating and exponential rate that I’ve been hard-pressed to keep up with over the past four days. We’ll need to clone replacements for . . . almost all of her organs.”

 

“But,” Sara croaked, then swallowed around the ticking in her throat. “But that’s _easy_ , right? That’s . . . standard, isn’t it?”

 

“Yes . . . but never so many at once. And never in the aftermath of a disruptor blast. There’s . . . no guarantee that Vetra will survive the surgeries. And no guarantee that the disruption of her bodily functions won’t continue once the transplants are complete. This weapon disrupts on sub-cellular level. That causes damage that is . . . difficult to halt, let alone reverse.” Lexi shook her head apologetically. “We’ve simply never seen a weapon cause injuries like this. . . .”

 

Sara’s knees gave out. Reyes barely caught her as the docking bay greyed-out and darkness nibbled at the edges of her compromised vision.

 

#

 

When the darkness receded, Sara blinked up into eyes the muted jungle-green of army flack.

 

“It wasn’t a dream, was it?” she asked those unusually candid, unusually _concerned_ eyes. Reyes Vidal smiled limply as he sat back in his chair.

 

“Unfortunately, not,” he replied in a rough, low voice. And when Sara attempted to sit up, Reyes helped her. She blinked as the room spinning slowly around her resolved into a corner of the main Med Bay. It was packed with patients and personnel. The former were nearly silent, in their eerie shell-shock. The latter were focused and kind. Lexi was among them, moving from cluster of Exiles to cluster of Exiles like an angel of mercy.

 

Sara’s left hand clenched reflexively in the linen on her narrow bed. “How long was I out?”

 

::Approximately seventy-seven minutes, Pathfinder,:: SAM informed her, just as Reyes said: “A little more than an hour.”

 

Left hand now going to her temple, which had started throbbing steadily once she was upright, Sara closed her eyes and tried to clear her fuzzy, white-noise brain. “Scott?”

 

“Still in surgery. Still stable,” Reyes said with tired relief, squeezing her right hand. Sara hadn’t even noticed he was holding it, until that moment. “According to Lexi, the neurosurgeon says Scott has a very high chance of pulling through with no permanent damage to his brain or his implant.”

 

Nodding, Sara took a breath and tried to ground herself. To prepare herself for the worst. “And . . . and Vetra?”

 

Reyes’s brow furrowed and his gaze dropped. “They’re . . . keeping her in stasis to slow the worst of the damage down. Until replacement organs can be cloned and . . . hopefully while in stasis, her body will rally and fight the continuing effects of the disruptor blast.”

 

Once more nodding, Sara closed her eyes for a few moments, willing the maelstrom within to center, so she could place herself at its eye. She knew that if she could just touch that eerie, charged calm . . . she could be . . . not alright . . . but she’d be able to function. And she _had_ to function. Had to be strong.

 

Two minutes later she opened her dry, but irritated eyes and squinted in the bright lights of the Med Bay. A glance at the bed to her right showed Liam Kosta, leg suspended in a sling, soundly unconscious, lines of care and strain fallen away from his face. At his side, sitting quietly, was Jaal, his eyes closed and head bowed.

 

To Sara’s left, curled up together, barely taking up room even in the narrow Med Bay bed, were the two small children that’d followed Drack off the _Tempest_. The boy was asleep facing Sara, his thumb in his small, slack mouth. Spooning behind him, one arm draped protectively over him, the girl was also sleeping. They were both slight and dark, with foxlike faces and elfin features—pretty and delicate. Straight, ink-dark hair, messy and in want of washing, surrounded their heads. The clothes they wore were grungy and too large—no-color fabric, shiny and poorly made. Their feet were bare and black on the bottoms. . . .

 

Sara blinked, and realized that she was standing at the foot of the bed in which the children slept. She didn’t recall standing or crossing the few feet from her bed to theirs.

 

“Where’re your parents?” she wondered, frowning down at the slumbering children. Reyes sighed, from his place just behind her. Such was Sara’s numbness and bone-deep weariness that she didn’t even start.

 

“I don’t know,” he said quietly. Then: “But no one’s been by to claim them or ask after them since Drack brought them here.”

 

Sara’s frown deepened, but she said nothing, merely watched the pair sleep on. It wasn’t long before the boy began whimpering and moaning unhappily, mumbling around his thumb in mostly baby-talk.

 

Drifting around to the boy’s side of the bed, Sara reached out hesitantly, then laid her hand on the boy’s messy hair lightly . . . then a bit more firmly. With a final petulant, unhappy whimper, he butted sleepily into her touch, like a kitten, and sank back into a deeper sleep. But not before slurring out around his tiny thumb:

 

“Mama.”

 

Eyes gone wide, Sara almost jerked her hand away as if burned. _Almost_.

 

In the end, she let her hand slowly shift, until she was brushing the boy’s smooth, round cheek with her fingertips, entranced by the way his thick, stubby fan of dark lashes rested on his dusky skin. She didn’t notice when Reyes disappeared for a minute, then returned with a chair, which he promptly sat her in, his heavy, strong hands warm on her shoulders for a supportive squeeze, before he disappeared again, with a soft murmur of: “I’m going to see if there’s been any update on Scott.”

 

Sara kept vigil over the sleeping children, her hand now resting over the little boy’s free one, which was curled up near his face. And for a long time . . . there was nothing else in the world. Nothing but his precious hand under hers and the certainty that she would do anything to keep him—to keep _them_ —safe and secure.

 

#

 

The next time Sara woke up—startled and ejected from a nightmare about the Archon and the kett, and all the bullshit that she’d somehow managed to put behind her two and a half years ago—it was to a pair of wide, round dark eyes staring at her . . . curious and unafraid.

 

She sat up from her forward slump, yawned, and smiled a little at the wide-eyed child. The boy, still sucking his thumb, smiled back around it, his other tiny hand holding onto her fingers.

 

Sara’s smile grew wider as a strange, warm feeling spread throughout her being while gazing into the child’s trusting eyes.

 

::Pathfinder. You have been asleep for four hours and sixteen minutes,:: SAM informed her gently, the way he spoke to her when she was hungover. As always, his consideration made her feel a sudden rush of emotion for the AI. Even though most of the time she was certain that SAM preferred Scott to her, moments like these made that an easier thing to accept. ::There are no changes in Vetra’s status. She is still in stable, if critical condition, and under constant monitoring. It will be several more hours, at least, before she is strong enough to be placed in stasis and allowed to receive visitors. Scott, however, is out of surgery and still in a medically-induced coma. Drs. Saito and T’Perro feel it best that we wait for the swelling in his brain to go down and for his body to recover for a few days after surgery, before initializing his implant.::

 

If an AI could sound anxious and impatient— _cagey_ —SAM certainly did.

 

“Don’t worry, SAM. Scott’ll pull through. He always does,” Sara murmured, still meeting the boy’s guileless gaze. _Several hours_ , she thought, and no span of time had ever seemed more interminable. “He knows if he doesn’t, I’ll track his ghost-ass down to the afterlife and give it what-for.”

 

::Quite. And I would most certainly come along to be of assistance in the tracking, Pathfinder. Scott’s ghost-arse would not long evade us,:: SAM replied firmly, and Sara chuckled.

 

At that chuckle, the boy’s smile widened and he burbled a laugh around his thumb, blinking sleepily. He tugged on Sara’s hand, pulling it toward his face. Taking the unsubtle hint, Sara caressed the boy’s cheek slowly, tenderly, till he was drowsing, his pulls on his wet thumb becoming fewer and farther between.

 

It wasn’t long before his eyes slipped shut and his little body went lax with impending sleep. . . .

 

Sara didn’t even _realize_ she was singing until . . . she stopped because her voice hitched. Memories of the last time she sang this song swamped her—lying in bed with Vetra, holding the other woman through the shakes and dry-heaves occasioned by Sara’s ill-advised attempt at a traditional Turian meal—and the last time the song had been sung _to her_ —when she’d curled up in her mother’s hospital bed in the last days before Ellen Ryder’s death.

 

Her mother, barely possessing the strength to keep her eyes open, had somehow sung that damn song . . . the one from Sara’s earliest memories. The song that meant safety and companionship and hope:

 

“Just what makes that little old ant/ Think he'll move that rubber tree plant?/ Anyone knows an ant, can't,/ Move a rubber tree plant!/ But he's got high hopes!/ He's got high hopes!/ He's got high, apple-pie-in-the-sky hopes!/ So, any time you’re gettin' low,/ 'Stead of lettin' go,/ Just remember that ant—/ Oops! There goes another rubber tree plant!”

 

Tears welled in Sara’s eyes, blurring her vision of the precious boy sleeping in front of her.

 

::If you would like, Pathfinder, I can discover the identities of the children by matching their faces with the faces of the children in the Nexus’s archives. The boy may not have been born on the Nexus, but the girl would certainly have been in cryo-stasis with her parents.::

 

“ _Would_ you check, SAM? That’d . . . that’d be a real help,” Sara said, swallowing around another rush of deep affection. “Thank you.”

 

::Of course, Pathfinder. Accessing archived data . . . a moment. . . .:: SAM’s attention shifted for a half-second, like the blink of an internal eye, before he was announcing his findings. ::The girl is Sophia, daughter of Professor Phillip Prasonsanti and Dr. Leah Zweibel-Prasonsanti. The boy was surely born after the Uprising, though likely conceived on the Nexus. There is no record of his name.::

 

“ _Before_ the Uprising?” Sara’s brow furrowed as brushed the boy’s dark hair back from his brow. “But the procreation blockers. . . .”

 

::Dr. Zweibel-Prasonsanti was part of the CRC before she and her husband chose to leave with the Exiles. It is probable that she was able to reverse the blockers without alerting the heads of her department. For a trained specialist, such a procedure would be relatively simple and low-risk.::

 

Shaking her head, Sara’s hand moved down to the little girl’s hand, where it was draped over her brother’s side. There was a large, old burn scar across the back of that hand, shaped like a discolored hexagon. A glance at Sophia’s sleeping face showed that _even_ in sleep, the poor girl carried her cares and woes. Her mouth was turned down in a frown, her brow slightly furrowed.

 

“Can you access the _Nostromo’s_ logs? Find out what happened to their parents?”

 

::Accessing.:: Another nano-blink. ::Professor Prasonsanti died of an unidentified illness that resulted in high fevers and repeated, eventually lethal strokes, shortly before the _Nostromo_ was attacked by the pirates. Dr. Zweibel-Prasonsanti, according to the final ship-board security logs, died along with several other Exiles who were attempting to fight off the pirates’ initial attack.::

 

“Damnit,” Sara sighed, blinking away the tears that welled up in her eyes. “Do they have any other relatives in Andromeda?”

 

::No, Pathfinder. Nor are there any directives available for guardianship of the children in the event of their parents’ deaths.::

 

Looking around the Med Bay for the first time since this second awakening, it was to see the immediate area greatly emptied. The walking-wounded were gone, and several beds that had been occupied were now empty. Though a glance over her shoulder showed that Liam was still asleep in the bed beyond hers, and Jaal had gone. Sara’s bed was now occupied by an older human woman who was obviously awake, but just as obviously not interested in any sort of interaction. Her head was turned away from Sara, her salt-and-pepper hair obscuring her face.

 

“Where’s Reyes?” Sara asked SAM, turning back to the children. She got the start of her life when dark, round eyes—slightly slanted at the corners—met her own, wary and alert.

 

::Mr. Vidal is sitting with Scott. Rather, he has fallen asleep at Scott’s bedside.::

 

“Then he’s where he should be.” Sara smiled at the girl. Unlike her brother, she did _not_ smile back, her haunted eyes narrowed and distrustful in her peaked face. “Has anyone bothered to contact Sidera Nyx regarding her sister? Is she still at Kadara Port with Yanos?”

 

::Affirmative, Pathfinder. Shall I craft a missive requesting her presence, or do you wish to comm her, yourself?::

 

“I’ll comm her, myself, SAM. Thank you.”

 

::I am at your disposal.::

 

“Ditto,” Sara reassured the AI. “If . . . you ever wanna talk about _anything_ . . . I’m here.”

 

The AI didn’t reply in words, but Sara could feel his affection for her, as well as his worry and fretting over both her and Scott. And . . . even over Reyes and Vetra. . . .

 

Sara’s chest suddenly hurt as if her entire ribcage was being pressed in a vise. For long moments, she could barely draw breath. She blinked and tears fell freely from her eyes, and she moaned—closed her eyes to block the smear of color and light that the Med Bay had become.

 

For what felt like hours, it was all Sara could do to keep shuttling in constricted breaths even as they whooshed out of her in a near-anxiety attack of the sort she hadn’t had since she was a teenager.

 

::Pathfinder?:: SAM’s worried voice echoed throughout her consciousness. ::Shall I alert Dr. Longinus?::

 

One of the many shrinks on duty in the Nexus—an older Turian who’d made his home in the Citadel, once upon a time—and arguably one of the best, according to the many former and current soldiers aboard. Probably because, before he’d become a doctor, he’d been a celebrated soldier of some distinction.

 

He specialized in PTSD and war-related traumas.

 

Shaking her head and unable to answer, Sara shuddered and shook, feeling more alone and lost than she ever had in her entire life. Her heart felt like a desolate tundra, empty and frigid without Vetra’s smile and voice and _love_ to warm and fill it. To _reassure_ it, just by her simple, perfect presence, that all was not lost and never could be.

 

But even so—even in the midst of the frozen desert of her heart—there was a secret well-spring that flowed warm and deep, and kept her going. This well-spring was _hope_. Sara still had _hope_ that Vetra—strong, determined, do-or-die _Vetra_ —would recover. That hope, however misplaced and naïve, was more than the poor children next to her had. Their whole world had been ripped away from them in a matter of days. And they would _never_ get that old life back. . . .

 

Never.

 

The ordinary world of yesterday was gone forever for them. And who knew what _tomorrow’s_ world would bring?

 

Sara didn’t even realize how tightly she was grasping Sophia’s hand until the girl pulled free.

 

“Sorry,” Sara exhaled in a voice that was little more than a husk, now. As her little remaining energy flowed out of her in a rush, she slumped forward until her forehead touched the cool sheets. Then she buried her hot face in her arms and the bedding, and wept and mumbled: “I’m sorry, Sophia. So, _so_ sorry, honey. . . .”

 

For minutes that felt like eternities, Sara wept. And when a small hand lighted hesitantly on the crown of her head, uncertain fingers tracing over braids, then simply patting Sara’s head in a way that was meant to be comforting, Sara shivered and shook some more before the vise around her ribcage released suddenly. She sucked in a great, gasping breath that _also_ shivered and shook, and looked up, blinking away the tears that still trebled her vision.

 

Sophia was staring at her with a troubled, but less untrustworthy expression. Her eyes were too old for her young face . . . too sad and too knowing.

 

And Sara wanted to promise her and her sleeping brother that they would never lose _anything_ ever again. That they would _never again_ want for safety and security, home and happiness.

 

She wanted to promise them the world. _All_ the worlds.

 

But in the end . . . Sara Ryder, like her father before her, was a pragmatist, however enlightened. In the end, she made the only promise she could . . . the only one that would allow her to meet her own gaze in a mirror, later.

 

“I’ll be here when you wake up,” she whispered in a wrecked, but sincere voice. “I’ll be here. Go to sleep.”

 

Sophia blinked and frowned . . . then nodded once, lying back down, her face pressed to her brother’s nape.

 

It took a while, but eventually her body went limp with sleep, her arm once more draped over her brother protectively.

 

One hand settling over Sophia’s, the other over her brother’s, Sara once again kept vigil by the children’s bedside, just as SAM kept watch in the back of _her_ mind. And though her voice was a faded and broken thing, now, Sara sang again, nonetheless:

 

Came in from a rainy Thursday on the avenue.  
Thought I heard you talking softly.  
I turned on the lights, the TV, and the radio.  
Still I can't escape the ghost of you.

What has happened to it all?  
“Crazy,” someone say.  
Where is the life that I recognize?  
Gone away. . . .

But I won't cry for yesterday.  
There's an ordinary world  
Somehow, I have to find.  
And as I try to make my way  
To the ordinary world,  
I will learn to survive. . . .

Passion or coincidence once prompted you to say:  
"Pride will tear us both apart."  
Well, now, pride’s gone out the window,  
Cross the rooftops, run away.  
Left me in the vacuum of my heart.

What is happening to me?  
“Crazy,” someone say.  
Where is my friend when I need you most?  
Gone away. . . .

But I won't cry for yesterday.  
There's an ordinary world  
Somehow, I have to find.  
And as I try to make my way  
To the ordinary world,  
I will learn to survive.

Papers in the roadside tell of suffering and greed:  
Feared today, forgot tomorrow.  
Here, besides the news of holy war and holy need,  
Ours is just a little sorrowed talk.

And I don't cry for yesterday.  
There's an ordinary world  
Somehow, I have to find.  
And as I try to make my way  
To the ordinary world,  
I will learn to survive.

Every world is my world.  
(I will learn to survive.)  
Any world is my world.  
(I will learn to survive.)  
Any world is my world.

 

And when Sophia next opened her eyes, three hours and twenty-six minutes later, Sara—red-eyed, tired, and relieved—smiled.

 

This time, Sophia smiled back.

 

END

**Author's Note:**

> Lemme know what ya think, peeps! And come say hi on [The Tumbles](http://beetle-ships-it-all.tumblr.com)!


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